


forgetting

by ottermo



Category: Humans (TV)
Genre: F/M, Poetry, yeah I was surprised too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 01:12:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16822147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ottermo/pseuds/ottermo
Summary: "your memory might not be digital anymorebut we can keep it photographic.”Mattie introduces Leo to the concept of selfies.





	forgetting

**Author's Note:**

> just when i think i'm up to date i remember another scrap of something or other that i put on tumblr without crossposting to here. 
> 
> this one's a little weird. it aspires to be a poem. i'm willing to go so far as to call it an experiment.

looking at her now,  
the image sharp for all her smile is soft,  
he cannot believe he will have to surrender this detail:  
that one day, perhaps not far from now,  
all this will fade.  
blur at the edges,  
bleed from his mind like a rivulet opened at the base of his skull.  
that one day, even if the vague notion of this part of his life remains,  
it will be clustered, disordered,  
a smear across the landscape of his existence  
whose particular moments he will no longer be able to set out in sequence.

she watches his eyes.  
“it isn’t so bad,” she says,  
catching his thoughts in the air between them.  
“forgetting, I mean.  
sometimes the whispers are prettier.  
you can pretend.  
you can remember me saying something  
so much more poetic than  
…this.”  
he wonders if she knows that she is poetry already  
just as she is, in all the exactitudes  
of here and now.  
“i don’t want that,” he tells her.  
“the real thing is so much better.”  
her mouth twitches to a half smile.  
“for now,” she allows.

she shifts closer. “of course, there are other ways of preserving things.  
your memory might not be digital anymore  
but we can keep it photographic.”  
his face frowns without consulting him.  
“come on,” she says,  
“it won’t hurt.”  
and suddenly her arm is stretched up above them  
like a child reaching out to stroke clouds  
and he sees their reflection in the screen of her phone:  
is surprised by how peaceful they look,  
how complete.  
he is centre frame, her face  
only peeking from the side,  
which she must notice, but she doesn’t correct it,  
\- doesn’t perfect it –  
just taps the shutter and pins them down forever,  
the moment bound in two dimensions.  
her finger flickers, three more shots.  
“just in case,” she says.  
“there’s always one that’s better.”

something stirs inside his head  
as she lowers her hand and looks back at him.  
the words are uncertain  
but he knows who spoke them.  
‘i’d like to have  
a picture of us together,  
for when you die again.’  
he closes his eyes,  
but the ache is still there in the dark.  
he wonders why this fallible, unpredictable master  
whose whim he now lives by  
will not let him forget the things he does not wish to think of  
even as it erases the barest snatches  
that are left of what he’d dearly like to keep.

“there,” she says,  
when he opens his eyes,  
“that wasn’t so bad, was it?”  
and he smiles back.  
and looking at her now,  
he knows her light will not go out  
however much his brain might dull it;  
that one day, when the denser prose  
dies back, what’s left behind  
will be a haze of something beautiful  
and maybe that can be  
another kind of clarity,  
a shine that’s all its own.


End file.
